‘I’ll message you about both things as soon as I’ve done them,’ I reassured her with a smile, so glad she’d been open to letting me repair the damage I’d done at Christmas. I could definitely have a worse potential sister-in-law.
My mind stalled on the thought. I’d told Elle that Nick was planning on proposing at the barbecue. Wasthatwhat she had wanted to speak to Beth about so urgently? The last time I’d given her some personal information about Nick, she’d hightailed it straight over to Beth. That time he’d been glad, this time…he might decide to never confide in me again.
‘Thanks,’ she said again. ‘I’ll pass you back to Nick.’
‘No, that’s OK. I’m sure he’d prefer to spend some time with you now you’re home rather than playing video games with me.’
Clearly able to hear in the background he yelled something about whooping my ass again soon and I laughed as we all said goodbye.
I’d thought I could trust Elle with Nick’s plans, but why? Of course her loyalty to Beth was going to outweigh any obligation she felt to me. She probably thought that by telling Beth about Nick’s potential proposal she would scupper any ideas I had about convincing him otherwise. I’d thought we’d stopped being at war, but maybe she’d just hoodwinked me again?
When I got there I’d have to ask her…or maybe just jump straight to begging her not to tell Beth and ruin Nick’s proposal? Once I knew she wasn’t sick. There had been a stomach bug going around the office.
Damn, I wished I’d given in and messaged her in the week — I could have checked up on her sooner. What if she’d been languishing alone in her apartment all week, so ill she couldn’t even answer her phone? Or what if something had happened to her parents or one of her siblings?
Grabbing my keys, I headed straight out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Elle
Iheard the door buzzer like it was coming at me from the other end of a tunnel, rather than the other side of the room. I had a vague suspicion it had been ringing for a while. Peeling my bare legs away from my desk chair, I dragged myself over to the door and tiptoed up to peek through the peephole.
Stephen was outside, the shoulder of his white shirt and the edge of his ear and dark hair just visible as he stared at the crack in the door frame like a cat waiting to be let out.
I passed my hand over my hair, shook off an empty bag of chips I realised was stuck on my elbow, and shook my head. What was the point? He was going to look like a movie star, and I had more important things on my mind.
‘Youarehome,’ he said by way of greeting when I opened the door.
‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘It occurred to me on the way over you might be celebrating with your family.’
‘Celebrating what?’
He tilted his head. ‘The Fourth of July.’
‘Itis?’ My eyes widened, both because I couldn’t remember if I’d told my family I wouldn’t be there for our annual picnic and because that meant I only had two more days before my editor expected my manuscript in her inbox.
‘Are you all right?’ His brow furrowed as he took in my dishevelled appearance. ‘Are you ill?’
I forced a laugh. ‘Some people might call it an illness, but it’s not contagious. You wanna come in for a coffee?’
He nodded and followed me into my kitchen. I could see him throwing side-eye glances at the state of the place and I knew hisfingers must’ve been itching to start tidying up. I got to the sink and found there were no clean cups. There was a row of them along my desk behind the laptop but I got side-tracked from collecting them because I remembered I needed to save and back up.
‘So, what’s going on, Elle? Beth asked me to swing by and check on you because she was worried.’
Oh.Bethhad been worried. Not him. I slumped back down on my desk chair. I mean, why would he be worried? We’d only just seen each other last weekend. There were some clattering noises and I realised he’d come over, collected the mugs and gone back again to take over the coffee-making duties. I forced myself to close the lid on my laptop. My eyes were gritty and barely able to focus.
‘It’s no big deal, I just hit pay dirt on the edits for this novel and thought I’d better get some actual words written. It can’t all be Pinterest boards and aesthetics.’ I drummed my fingers on top of the laptop. That night babysitting after the barbecue had unlocked something and new scenes had flooded me when I woke up at 4am on the Sunday morning.
The first day and a half had been a crazy flow of ideas, and when that ended, I started the work of trying to figure out where they fit. Some had, some hadn’t. The bones of the novel ended up being replaced and it was all I could think about.
He leaned on my kitchen counter, his dark eyes flicking between my drumming fingers and my face. ‘Why do you always do that?’
‘Hmm…do what?’
‘Make out your writing is no big deal.’
